OTTAWA — The Friends of Lansdowne have fought a good fight but should stand down now that the Ontario Court of Appeal has dismissed a legal effort to stop the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park, Mayor Jim Watson said Monday.

In a unanimous ruling delivered Monday, three judges agreed with an earlier ruling that the city legally entered a partnership with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group for the project and that the deal doesn’t constitute an illegal subsidy for a private business. They comprehensively rejected the case brought by the Friends of Lansdowne.

“It is not for the courts to second guess or reweigh policy and financial considerations that informed the city’s decision to advance this development,” the ruling says. Whatever the merits of the Lansdowne plans, it says, there’s no proof the city conceived them improperly or did a dirty deal with OSEG to make them happen.

The unanimity means that the Friends of Lansdowne don’t have an automatic right to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada: a further appeal is still possible, but it would require the Supreme Court’s permission.

Don’t do it, Watson said at a lunch-hour news conference.

“Both sides together have spent close to $1.5 million in total and we have two unanimous decisions that allow the work will proceed,” Watson said. “I believe it’s time to accept and respect the court’s validation of city council’s decisions and move forward with this important city-building project.”

The Friends’ opposition is genuine and passionate, Watson said, but enough is enough.

Friends of Lansdowne president June Creelman said the group hasn’t made a quick decision about an appeal, but hopes to decide in the next few days.

“We always knew this would be a difficult legal case because there’s so little precedent for bringing a city council to court over these issues,” she said.

The tone of the Friends’ press conference made it sound as though the group is beginning to think about what it can do to improve the redevelopment plan rather than how to stop it. A formal statement talks about “refocusing our efforts on asking the province to reform the Municipal Act to better protect the public interest, and to ensure that proper heritage and environmental approvals are obtained before the City begins any construction.”

Creelman was accompanied by Carleton business professor Ian Lee, who’s previously been fierce about taking the case as far as it could go. Monday, he was philosophical.

“Today, we lost our appeal, and I’m certainly not going to sugar-coat or give you spin, because we are not professional politicians,” he said. He said a top priority is to seek reform of the law governing Ontario’s municipalities.

Both Lee and Creelman said whatever happens at Lansdowne, the Friends have won a significant victory by teaching the city it can’t barge ahead with sole-sourced deals and expect nobody to object. “We’ve raised the bar,” Lee said. “I don’t think that any municipal politician would ever do again what they did three or four years ago.”

City lawyer Rick O’Connor said if the case continues and the city wins, he’ll follow a recently revised policy that says the city should seek to have its legal bills paid by the other side. He estimated the city’s costs at $25,000 to deal with an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, and a further $50,000 if such an appeal went ahead.

Creelman said the Friends have raised about $300,000 over the last few years and have spent almost all of it on legal bills. Their deal with lawyer Steven Shrybman is that they pay him what they can raise, she said.

Financing an appeal hasn’t entered their thinking yet, she said — they’re focused on whether they have any legal basis.

The case, a challenge of the city’s plans to work with a group of private developers and sports businessmen to renovate Frank Clair Stadium, add a park to part of the property and commercial and residential buildings to the rest, was heard in November. Residents and politicians alike impatiently awaited the three-judge panel’s decision ever since.

Councillor Tim Tierney clapped his hands and pumped a fist when he heard the judges’ decision was unanimous. “Yes!” he said. “Let’s get going!”

The Friends of Lansdowne argued that the deal with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group amounts to an illegal subsidy of their business, that the agreement was reached in bad faith, and that it violated the city’s own procurement bylaw. After a trial last summer, Justice Charles Hackland ruled comprehensively in the city’s favour, but the Friends appealed on the grounds that Hackland made numerous legal errors in his decision.

He didn’t, says the ruling from the three judges — written by Justice Susan Lang and agreed with by Justice Robert Blair and Chief Justice Warren Winkler — which supports Hackland’s findings in every respect. On the key question of whether a complex public-private partnership breaks the provincial law against municipalities’ subsidizing businesses, the appeal court said the deal has to be considered in its totality, not piecemeal. So even if parts of the Lansdowne plans do appear to give OSEG an unusual advantage, they’re permissible in the context of a larger deal.

Increasingly anxious city staff have been urging the city to move ahead with parts of the Lansdowne project that can be done independently of the partnership with OSEG. A final vote by city council is due in June; the hired-gun lawyer who handled the case for the city, Peter Doody, said that without a live court case over the plans, there’s no legal barrier holding them back.

The whole thing is to be done by summer 2015, but court delays are squeezing that timeline hard. The city hopes to have Frank Clair Stadium in shape for an international soccer tournament in 2014 (Watson said a decision about which Canadian cities will host games as part of the tournament is expected from FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, within a week or so).

It’s not clear what would happen to the plans if the Friends do try to take the appeal court’s ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada. As far as the developers are concerned, it’s full speed ahead.

“The goal is to try to stay as best as we can on the construction schedule to be open for the summer of 2014 for football, soccer and lots of other stuff,” said Roger Greenberg, the head of the Minto empire and the front man for OSEG. “I think that this is the final level of appeal that makes any sense to my mind, at least.”

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